The Use of 'Special Characters'

Yahoo Archive
1
I would strongly encourage you to stay away from "those" types of
special characters. Consider (tm) or [TM] instead of the actual
trademark symbol.



I stay away from pipes, too, as they could be used as a delimiter.





In a utopian world (which we never see) I encourage only 1-0 and A-Z and
enforce all caps. It's clean and supported by a wide array of bolt-on
applications. The less "special characters" you have the potential lies
for a more scalable system. Plus with barcodes, especially Code39
standard, some of these characters are unsupported.



In the real world, my engineers don't listen and I have spaces,
underscores, dashes, parens, carrots and pound-signs.



But your symbol isn't even a key on the keyboard so I would stay away
from it.



________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Gene Mcdonald
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:25 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'





I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to
be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are
told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can
someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided?
What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be
appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to
include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can
this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,

Gene McDonald

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided? What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,
Â
Gene McDonald




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
3
--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, Gene Mcdonald <gmcdonald333@...> wrote:
>
> I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided? What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?
>
> Thank you,
> Â
> Gene McDonald
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
4
I've always preached against the use of special characters in key fields
(or ID fields). Database systems sometimes interpret special characters
as commands.

For example, when we were on V8.03.305F, someone had created a price
list that had an "&" in the price list code. When they returned to that
screen, they could not pull in the price list and it didn't show up on
the search window.

If may be that later version of Vantage/Epicor make it possible to use
special characters but I think it's better safe than sorry.

I'm usually find with special characters in description fields but even
then I suggest that they only do it if they really need to.



As for the trademark, you could use something like (TM) instead.





From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Gene Mcdonald
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:25 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'





I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to
be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are
told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can
someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided?
What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be
appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to
include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can
this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,

Gene McDonald

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5
Gene,

I remeber our CAM mentioning this to us. Not until yesterday had a problem with this we had this character included() and I was unable to print a Crystal report. It gave me an error saying the the XML fiel didnt recognize the character. I found where this character was and deleted it. After that I didnt have any problem.

--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, Gene Mcdonald <gmcdonald333@...> wrote:
>
> I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided? What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?
>
> Thank you,
> Â
> Gene McDonald
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
6
One of our experiences with special characters in Vantage...We used "O'Fallon" as a ShipTo ID for a customer. When we tried to add an order for this customer we received an error message "Syntax error: Missing operand after 'Fallon' operator.". We didn't receive the error when we added a quote for that customer, only when we added an order. I happened to notice the ship to ID was very similar to the error message, deleted the ship to and added it back without the ' (OFallon) and the error went away. Thankfully, I tried that before I spent hours searching for the "Fallon operator"! I don't know if the use of special characters in a description would have the same affect as using special characters in a key. I warned our users to stay away from using special characters in a key when adding!

Sue


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, Gene Mcdonald <gmcdonald333@...> wrote:
>
> I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided? What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?
>
> Thank you,
> Â
> Gene McDonald
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
7
Gene,



I did not read the other messages, so sorry if I am repeating someone
else's answer.



Those particular characters are actually OK. We use the underscore, the
pipe, and the dash in everything! Do NOT use the following: '&', and '
' (space). If you were to get the product Configurator, it absolutely
hates these characters. So rule of thumb is to just not use them in KEY
fields. Descriptions you can use any characters you want.



Special characters are the ones above the numbers on the keyboard.







M. Manasa Reddy

manasa@... <mailto:manasa@...>

800.852.2325

630.806.2000 ofc

630.806.2001 fax

www.weldcoa.com

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Gene Mcdonald
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 12:25 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'





I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to
be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are
told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can
someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided?
What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be
appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to
include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can
this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,

Gene McDonald

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
8
I have to agree with Joe. If there's one thing you can count on, that's
special characters will come back to bite you somewhere. They always do,
and they always wait until you've got them in so many fields that it's
almost impossible to change them. Then, you're left to create special
procedures to interpret them when you're trying to port data to/from your
systems.



Kevin Simon



From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Joe Rojas
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 2:00 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'





I've always preached against the use of special characters in key fields
(or ID fields). Database systems sometimes interpret special characters
as commands.

For example, when we were on V8.03.305F, someone had created a price
list that had an "&" in the price list code. When they returned to that
screen, they could not pull in the price list and it didn't show up on
the search window.

If may be that later version of Vantage/Epicor make it possible to use
special characters but I think it's better safe than sorry.

I'm usually find with special characters in description fields but even
then I suggest that they only do it if they really need to.

As for the trademark, you could use something like (TM) instead.

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ] On
Behalf
Of Gene Mcdonald
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:25 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'

I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to
be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are
told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can
someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided?
What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be
appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to
include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can
this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,

Gene McDonald

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
9
There are a several reasons, here are a few.

1. Barcoding - Many Barcode font character sets are limited.

If you plan on using Barcode 3 of 9, only use the 3 of 9 characters on
ID fields that get barcoded (Part Number, Employee ID, etc).

2. Windows Directory name rules - Do not use windows directory
special characters like period"." in ID fields. You have a periods
embedded in a part numbers and it is decided that all part number
attachments will be stored in a directory that is the part number.
This can be a problem.

3. XML can have issues.

4. The whole system has problems when text fields are copied from
word documents with the Word formatting hidden characters.

5. It has been a while but Product Configurator used to have
limits.



Hope this helps



Dale E. Schuerman

Senior Consultant

Epicor Certified Consulting Partner



RAM Software Systems, Inc.

1701 North Collins Suite 200
Richardson, Texas 75080



972-669-0763 x233 (voice)

972-669-9603 (fax)

mailto:dale.schuerman@...
<BLOCKED::blocked::mailto:dale.schuerman@...> (email)

http://www.ramsys.com <blocked::blocked::http://www.ramsys.com/>
(website)





From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Gene Mcdonald
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 12:25 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] The Use of 'Special Characters'





I have been told by our Epicor mentor that 'special characters' are to
be avoided when using Epicor. When we ask about these characters we are
told that underscore ( _ ) and pipes ( | ) are special characters. Can
someone shed some light on this? Are special characters to be avoided?
What characters qualify as 'special'? Any information would be
appreciated. In one specific use, our part description is slated to
include 'trade names' which we feel should include the trademark. Can
this be done? How would we incorprate it within a DMT upload?

Thank you,

Gene McDonald

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




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